Inheritor Of Magic: The Magi King

That evening, once the reports were all in and the daily requests for new Inscriptions to make production of various items and defensive spells had been filled, Wolfe made his way to the design department, where he had been assured that there was a surprise waiting for him.

He had been getting much better at the remotely activated Inscriptions, the ones that any magic user could activate to produce a desired effect, guided by their desires. It was perfect for creating new furniture, since the workers could set the colours and shapes, while the Inscription put the basic enchantments on the piece. 

But these days, that wasn't enough, and many people had come to him either to have custom clothing made like Kira and the Magi women, or to have inscribed talismans made to sew into their clothes or hide in pockets.

It was faster and more powerful to do it that way than to have an inexperienced witch cast the spells, and they had plenty of witches who weren't well versed in anything but the basics. There were just too many other things going on for them to spend days learning new spells as their strength grew.

They wanted to do it now, but again, their power was already needed somewhere, so they only had a few hours a night to dedicate to bettering themselves.

The majority of the design team was waiting for Wolfe when he finally arrived after dinner, and they had a new vehicle made up and waiting for inscriptions.

"Welcome back. I think that we have the perfect vehicle for the coming engagement, as long as we can make the spells work.

This is our new fast attack all terrain vehicle. In the front, we have a spot for the driver, with an elevated seat in the back, with a pintle mounted heavy machine gun.

With the chassis of the vehicle, the extra weight of the gun is not a problem to transport, and the whole unit only weights three hundred kilos plus occupants. 

We have storage for two travel packs, one standard supply case there in the back, along with three cases of ammunition.

Two passengers can be seated on the back with the supply case, but it might make the vehicle light in the nose. 

The mana crystals are stored in the floor pan, giving the vehicle a lower centre of gravity, so it shouldn't be too unstable with a witch or smaller beast kin in the gunners seat, but I wouldn't recommend that we recruit the bear kin as gunners." Janet, their lead engineer, joked as she finished pointing out the basic design of the vehicle.

"This is pretty good. How much mana crystal is it going to need?" Wolfe asked.

"For the actual propulsion, not much. It's such a light vehicle that even if it's racing over the ground, it would only use a tenth of what the big trucks do. But if we're making it for military use, then we need to put some serious defensive spells on it, and you know how fast those will use mana if they're under attack." The engineer shrugged, making her tight black curls bounce.

"Alright, let's see what I can do. This will be our first real military vehicle, so I should likely try to make it better than anything it's going to face. That means we will burn through a lot of mana, so we will need at least one witch in the vehicle to keep it going, even with a mana collection array.

Or should I focus on defence, and we can just use the basic enchanted ammunition?" Wolfe asked.

The workers on the design team all started unrolling plans to place on the table, showing Wolfe all the various ideas that they had. 

"We weren't sure what would work for you, so we made a bunch of designs. Most of them have the machine gun as the primary weapon, since it does a lot of damage on its own, but there are some other options.

For example, this plan was to add an attack spell array on the front that could be operated by the driver, as well as the machine gun. That would let us pick out various attack styles that might work well for a fast attack vehicle. 

My thought was [Wind Blades] to cut down obstacles in front of the buggy so that it could race through an enemy camp and do maximum damage from up close where they couldn't hide. It might not be the most practical, though, since the tactic would put the occupants of the vehicle in danger." Janet explained.

"We had also considered mounting it with a light artillery array, but the machine gun already does a similar job, thanks to the enchantments. But there were some other suggestions. Things like having the buggies be able to serve as a mobile barrier generator, or anti-aircraft batteries. 

That last one we will have to work on. The ten millimetre quad guns are far too large for the ATV chassis, and the vibration would shake it apart. I think that for now, the basics of just the one gun and some defensive spells should be enough to start getting them out in the field and using them to patrol our territory for more dangerous monsters and invading forces.

Patrolling on foot isn't efficient enough, and there is no need for us to keep hiding when there are so many witches around who could find the villages with only a little work." She added.

"Alright, let's get to work on this basic version, and we can make sure that it all works before we send a bunch of them out with the scouts. If it's just defensive magic, they'll only need to rely on the self-charging for the movement of the buggy, and if they get attacked, so I think that it's safe enough to send them with just scouts and not witches at first.

I think that involving the magic users will be our last resort, since there are hundreds of other warriors to every magic user in the Frozen Wastes." Wolfe agreed.